April 1950 Pioneer Zephyr Train-Truck Collision in Longmont

Not many vehicle drivers or their passengers would survive a collision with a 50-mph train while driving over a railroad track crossing.  But that's what happened 64 years ago in Longmont when a farmer and his 4-year old daughter were returning to Johnstown in their truck after filling their water tank in Longmont.  Both miraculously survived, even after they were dragged 170 yards by the train while in the truck.  The story was not so good for the train fireman who had to be administered sedatives during the hour and a half it took to cut him out of the damaged locomotive, and suffered career-ending injuries from the accident.  And as it turned out, this was  a rather famous train.


On April 7, 1934, the country's first diesel streamliner called the Zephyr 9900 rolled out of the Budd plant in northern Philadelphia (the decaying grounds of this factory were mentioned in the Wall Street Journal just two weeks ago).  Built out of stainless steel, it had a striking look with its shovel-nose form:

As a marketing ploy a month later in May, it made a highly advertised speed run from Denver to Chicago (1015 miles) in a record-smashing time of 13 hours, 5 minutes.  Regular trains at the time would take 25 hours for the same route.  

Six minute video of the Pioneer Denver to Chicago run, accompanied by Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue:


 
This now-famous train even inspired a movie later that year, titled after its nickname, the "Silver Streak":

As more Zephyr's were produced, the 9900 was renamed "the Pioneer" (indicating it was the first) in 1936 and eventually placed into secondary routes.  This takes us to Longmont in 1950 where the Pioneer was leased to the Colorado & Southern (C&S) Railway, running as a passenger train between Denver and Cheyenne.  A great picture from the Denver Public Library collection captured the Pioneer at the Longmont station in February 1950:

Image from Denver Public Library

The same train station building today:

On the morning of Saturday, April 29, 1950, Harold Anderson (age 49), a farmer from Johnstown, had just filled a tank on his truck with water from Johnson's Corner in Longmont and was heading eastbound for home.  In the truck with him was his 4-year old daughter, Ingrid.  As he crossed the north/south C&S tracks, his truck was slammed in the middle by the Pioneer Zepyhr as it was headed north for Cheyenne out of Longmont at 50 mph.  Anderson and his daughter remained inside the vehicle as it was dragged north for 170 yards by the hobbled train. Miraculously, both survived.  When interviewed as he was being moved to an ambulance, Anderson said that his truck windows were fogged up and that he neither saw or heard the train.  

No passengers on the train were hurt and the engineer and conductor also survived the accident with no injuries.  The fireman in the locomotive, however, didn't have such luck. The train's collision with the truck's water tank left veteran C&S Engineer Dan Grinstead of Denver (age 53), who was substituting as fireman, pinned inside the crushed cab with a broken pelvis and a fractured hip.  He was given sedatives by a doctor while crews worked an hour and a half to cut him out of the twisted metal using blowtorches.  Of course the Pioneer Zephyr was in no shape to continue to Cheyenne and it was pulled back to Longmont. 

The next day, Ingrid was released from the Longmont Hospital  with a few bruises and lacerations.  Harold Anderson had some chest injuries but he was able to walk around and his condition was not thought to be serious.  Grinstead was still in serious condition with his injuries and suffering from severe shock.  

So where was this train-truck collision?  The evening Times-Call on that Saturday described the location as "one half-mile east of Mumford's Corner, northeast of town."  

Mumford's Corner is today the corner of Main Street (US 287) and Colorado Highway 66, named after a prominent Longmont family that lived in that area for decades.  You're probably familiar with the train crossing just east of that intersection on 66, a little past Walmart. 

The truck was dragged north almost two football fields long, along these tracks:

Mumford's Corner is long gone but the name is preserved in north Longmont:

This train wreck story is mentioned in Margaret Coel's fine 1991 book, Goin' Railroading. She wrote that Grinstead's injuries kept him hospitalized for months and that he was sadly forced to retire. 

After the wreck, the Pioneer Zephyr was moved to Aurora, IL (1990's pop culture fans know Aurora as the home of Wayne's World) where it was repaired and put back into service.  It was retired in 1960 and is now on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago:

Occasionally, some 35mm slides of the Longmont Zephyr accident appear on eBay.  Out of respect to the seller, I won't post them here but this Google Images link (never guaranteed to work) may show some of them, with a red tow truck next to the wreckage.

And Ingrid Anderson?  She'd be 68 today.  

Looking for Longmont's Dinky Steam Engine

If you remember the visit to Sterling, Colorado, you saw the picture of their Dinky steam engine that was a workhorse at the Great Western Sugar factory there.  Dinkies were used to switch railroad cars on the factory grounds, sort of like tugboats.  This one in Sterling was built by the Davenport Locomotive Works.

Most of the Great Western sugar beet factories had a Dinky and a good introduction to them can be found in an article by Jeff Terry. 

As you can see above, Sterling preserved their Dinky (#2121) in a little park along the railroad tracks, close to their shuttered factory.   Ft. Morgan has one of their Dinkies at the front door of their still-running sugar beet plant:

And the former Great Western Sugar town of Ovid, Colorado has saved their Dinky (#2150) in a city park:

Longmont's sugar factory had a Dinky too (#2123), and according to Terry, it was "noted for its enormous coal bunker which extended over it's cab roof."

So what happened to Longmont's Great Western Sugar Dinky?  Terry's article (from 2001) says it was sold to a Kansas City, MO  railroad museum in 1978 for restoration but that museum had since shut down.   He mentioned that it could eventually end up at the Midland Railway museum in Baldwin City, KS (45 miles SW of Kansas City).  That was written a while ago but it seemed like a good place to start, in determining the whereabouts of Great Western Sugar Dinky #2123 that worked the factory railroad yard in Longmont. 

A contact at Midland Railway answered an email, telling me that the Longmont Dinky was not at their facility but they put me in touch with someone who did know where it was.  That friendly person told me that Dinky #2123 is privately owned and sits on a railroad siding in NE Kansas City in an industrial, railroad-park type of area south of the Missouri River, inside I-435:

Even though the Longmont Dinky is on private property, we can use the satellite view from Google Maps to get a glimpse of what's left of it.  It sits between two buildings, as circled below:

A closer look.  There it is!

And, a different aerial perspective from Bing (it looks like the white railroad car above can move around):

The actual Google map link is here if you want to look around yourself.  

So there you have it.  This story could have had a happier ending if the Longmont dinky was preserved and sitting in a Longmont park (like has happened in some of the other sugar beet factory towns) instead of rusting away in the Northeast Industrial District of Kansas City.


Here's hoping that it can still be restored someday.

  

Stops on Longmont's Baby Railroad (1882)

If you remember the story from a year and a half ago about the narrow-gauge railroad between Longmont and Canfield (and eventually to Denver) in the 1880's, here's a list of stops on the route, courtesy of a short piece in an 1882 Longmont Ledger newspaper:

There are ten stops on the narrow gauge railroad -- Longmont, Ward, Canfield, Northrup, Mitchell, Sharrattville, Lakeside, Hallock Junction, Argo, and Denver.

That is not the same Ward that we know today high up in the hills, which officially got its name a decade later in 1894.

I'll have to see if any of these mostly-unknown places show up on any maps. And if you've got any information, feel free to leave a comment.

Sugar Tramp: Colorado's Great Western Railway

A helpful reader tipped me off to this excellent book about the history of the Great Western Sugar Company's railroad company, but he wasn't sure of the author's name. The book's full information is:

Sugar Tramp: Colorado's Great Western Railway
by Gary Morgan
Centennial Publications, Ft. Collins, Colorado
1975

It's out of print but luckily available in local libraries. If yours doesn't have it, an inter-library loan should work for you. In addition to covering the Dinkies mentioned earlier, the book is full of maps, detailed history, sample timetables, passenger car information, and the story of their steam to diesel transition. Railfans will greatly appreciate the complete numbered inventory of all of GW's steam locomotives, including pictures.

The Great Western Railway Company (GWRC) had tracks connecting their Longmont, Loveland, Windsor, Johnstown, and Eaton sugar factories. Longmonters can still see the tracks heading to Mead, like for example over in the Union Reservoir area. If you remember Highland Lake, their town diminished in population after GWRC decided to route their tracks through nearby Mead. And you might have read the other day, in the Times-Call Johnny St. Vrain column, that some of the GW railroad is being used these days to park train cars that are idle due to the slow economy.

A great book.

Eaton Colorado Sugar Factory

Next in the northeast Colorado beet sugar factory series is Eaton, the third factory in our area, and it was built in 1902 (the same year as the Greeley factory). It was ready to operate for the fall beet harvest of that year (called a "campaign" in sugar factory terms).

Eaton is just eight miles up the road from Greeley, on US-85, and is named after the tenth governor of Colorado, Benjamin Eaton, whose family was an early settler of the Poudre valley area in Weld County. Eaton went on to master irrigation and built some notable canals and reservoirs in his time. He is reported to have donated the sixty acres on which the Eaton sugar factory was built.

Funded and built by the Eaton Sugar Company and costing $750,000, it too was eventually bought and consolidated into the Great Western Sugar Company in 1905. The full processing capacity of the Eaton factory was 600 tons of beets per day.

The Eaton factory from around 1918, with the "shoebox" look, puffing out black smoke from its coal plant. The long flat structure on the right is the warehouse that was used to store the manufactured sugar.




The Eaton sugar factory was closed in 1977, giving it a lifetime of 75 years. It still stands today in 2009, in ruins, just east of downtown. Notice that the water tower is still apparently intact.


The always-present factory administration building up front:


Many of the sugar factories have these black stars on the brick. If you know what these are for, or what they signify, let me know!


Eaton's factory is in the same class as the one in Loveland and ours in Longmont: redevelopment has thus far been too expensive and no plan has been put forward yet that can outweigh the the environmental cleanup and demolition costs.


This factory was rare in that in had two residences on the property, perhaps for the factory manager or foreman, and an assistant. At least one other factory had dormitory rooms on the top floor of their administration building for the same purpose.



The obligatory sugar factory "railroad tracks to nowhere" picture. The Eaton factory was served by the Union Pacific line.


Another sight you'll sometimes see at old sugar factory sites are white mounds of lime. Limestone was brought in by the train cars (Wyoming was a common source), heated up in onsite kilns, and crushed to make lime powder that was used in the factory sugar extraction process. After being used, it was it was dumped outside:



One more look from the back:


Continuing series on the northeast Colorado beet sugar factories:

• Loveland (1901)
• Greeley (1902)
  

Greeley Sugar Factory

Continuing the series on Front Range beet sugar factories, the Greeley Colorado factory was completed in the fall of 1902, one year after the Loveland plant started operating. It was built at an enormous cost of $750,000 and designed to process 600 tons of beets per day, which later was expanded to 1000 tons.

The Greeley factory is interesting, in that:

• The Greeley factory processed beets until 2002, giving it a full 100 years of operation -- a lifetime much longer than most Front Range factories.
  
• The Greeley factory is no more! Unlike other ex-sugar factory cities (like Longmont) that are struggling with how to re-develop their crumbling factory sites and deal with the associated environmental problems, the factory owner (Western Sugar Cooperative) and the City of Greeley have successfully marketed and sold the property to a cheese company, which included a plan for razing the site. Just last year (2008), the factory was demolished by Colorado Cleanup, a Littleton company.
  
  There is a video on youtube of the concrete smokestack coming down in November 2008. Perhaps Longmont will experience a similar scene in the future.
  
  
  
  

The Greeley factory, from around 1918. This factory had a more interesting architectural facade than the typical industrial "shoebox" look, like that at Loveland and other factories that will be shown here in the future.


A sugar beet factory needed three crucial things before any investment could be made in its construction:

1. Water: the Greeley factory was built on some bottom land by the Poudre River, and used a well to pump one million gallons of water per day, for the manufacturing of sugar.
   
2. Railroad access. Not only to get the beets to the factory, but also to bring in coal, limestone, and coke, and to carry away the finished sugar product and leftover beet pulp which was used to feed livestock. A Union Pacific railroad spur was constructed to reach the Greeley factory, and 60% of the beets sliced in Greeley came via rail.
   
3. Beets, of course. Before any factory was built, enough acres of committment had to be contracted with local farmers to grow beets.

Great Western Sugar company sold its assets, including the Greeley factory, to the UK-based Tate & Lyle sugar company in 1985. That lasted ten years until 1995 when the company was up for sale again. A group of 1,000 western sugar beet growers formed a cooperative in 2002 called the Western Sugar Cooperative and bought the company. In 2006, the coop put the Greeley plant up for sale, with the cost of operation as the major reason. A sale was made in 2008 to the Leprino Food company, who will be building a large cheese factory there, scheduled to be opened in 2011.

I should have taken some pictures of the old factory before it was torn down (lesson learned!), but luckily the Google Maps Street View crew visited Greeley in the past few years, and still has the site captured in pre-demolishment form, in its photographic memory (until it gets refreshed someday)!

The front entrance to the factory (photos courtesy of Google) at 1302 1st Avenue in Greeley. You can still see some elements of the original factory in the picture above:





A January 2009 perspective from the same entrance fence shows nothing left but the sign. The factory has been torn down and trucked away.



The tracks stop here, on the way to factory-no-more:


Continuing series on the Colorado Front Range beet sugar factories:

• Loveland (1901)

Someday in the future: a trail between Erie and Boulder

Almost a year ago, I wondered what would become of the abandoned Union Pacific railroad line between Erie and Boulder.


It was good to read an article in today's Daily Camera that says plans are underway to convert this to a trail, by the year 2015. The big challenge will be getting this trail across the major north/south highways, like 95th Street and US-287.


(Both pictures here are about a year old and from the Erie/Canfield area)

Longmont's "Baby Railroad" (1881-1889)

It's a little known fact that one of Colorado's first narrow-gauge railroads originated right here in Longmont, in the early 1880's. The story starts with some Longmont businessmen who were not happy with the "outlandish" high price of coal that Longmont was getting from the Marshall area, near Boulder. A good coal supply, obtained at a reasonable rate, was crucial to the survival of any Colorado town back then. With the discovery of the rich Rob Roy coal seam in the Canfield area, a railroad company was incorporated in 1878 with the chief purpose of getting coal to Longmont at a better price. Isaac Canfield himself was listed in the incorporation papers of the railroad known as the "Denver, Longmont, and Northwestern" line.

The narrow gauge railroad was opened on November 24, 1881 and consisted of 8.2 miles of track between Longmont and Canfield. Leaving Longmont at Main & 2nd Avenue, the route went up over Empson Hill and crossed the St. Vrain and Boulder Creek on the way to Canfield. One-way trip time was 45 minutes.

The map above is from 1904, many years after the Baby Railroad was gone, but you can use it to imagine where the route used to be (Canfield is next to Erie) and you can also see the Marshall coal fields down by Superior.

A picture is here from the Longmont Museum, showing a model of what the locomotive looked like on this railroad line.

A few weeks later, in early 1882, the railroad was extended from Canfield to meet the larger Denver, Utah, and Pacific railroad line which opened up additional opportunities beyond just moving coal. Suddenly, Longmont citizens had a convenient way of getting to Denver at a cost of $2.50, for business and leisure. Excursions, Phyllis Smith writes, "were the main entertainment of the 1880s. " The trip time from Longmont to Denver was 1 hour, 35 minutes and horses belonging to passengers could be transported for an additional 40 cents. Rock quarried in Lyons was transported to Denver on this railroad, for their sidewalks and buildings. Longmont received visitors to local festivals such as early instances of the Pumpkin Pie Day and the Firemen's Masquerade Ball, on this train, and vice-versa, our residents ventured to ice skating contests and band concerts in the Canfield/Erie area. Clearly, the railroad had evolved to serve a much larger range of uses than its original charter.

What happened to Longmont's Baby Railroad? Competition swept in when the Colorado Central, owned by Union & Pacific, fought back with lower freight and excursion rates (50 cents from Longmont to Denver, through Golden). The operating company of Longmont's Baby Railroad was eventually bought out and in 1889, the narrow gauge tracks between Longmont and Canfield were ripped out.

Someday in the next decade, RTD's FasTraks will again offer Longmont residents a rail trip to Denver via Boulder. Will this perhaps kick off another "excursion age"?

Most of this information came from an excellent article in the November 23, 1981 Longmont Times-Call newspaper, written by Linda Burleigh, and also from Phyllis Smith's "Once a Coal Miner" book mentioned previously.

[Edit on December  18, 2017:  Modernize the font]